And so.

And another lady in our ward passes on. I guess at work we still smile and continue business as usual, but in quieter moments we mourn for every single one in our own private way. I guess as doctors we have to be professional and somewhat detached in order to manage patients objectively, but interacting with them/poking them/seeing them every day for 2 weeks creates somewhat of an attachment.

Each patient has a story to tell, a lesson to teach. One of these lessons is to smile in spite of pain, and never, ever be rude or unreasonable. I guess there's enough pain and sickness in the world without we becoming a pain ourselves.

And so we eye the other lady with cancer remaining in the ward, and see how she's persistently febrile and isn't communicative like she was the day she first came in. And we pray that she'll at least make it home on monday, before she's discharged to that great ward in the sky.